Creative output submission
Social Works: The Braak Pavilion as an expression of Actor-Network Theory
Creative output submission
Social Works: The Braak Pavilion as an expression of Actor-Network Theory
Creative output submission
Social Works: The Braak Pavilion as an expression of Actor-Network Theory
Overview
Die Braak is the historic town square and cultural heart of Stellenbosch. The word “Braak” means fallow land and refers to the time when this parcel of land was left bare amongst the surrounding agricultural fields and town. In our contemporary context, “Braak” carries an unsettling reference to the potential future of our planet as a place devoid (‘braak’) of resources, filled with waste. The 2020 Stellenbosch Triennale theme, “Tomorrow there will be more of us”, echoes this sentiment.
The Braak pavilion, a temporary structure erected of reclaimed materials for the Stellenbosch Triennale, confronts visitors with this bleak prospect and invites them to consider alternative relationships with waste, like learning to appreciate waste as resource. More than an abstract idea, the public is encouraged to participate in the creation of the pavilion, weaving their own strands of waste into its structure as a metaphor for the capacity of individual contributions to conserve the planet.
The irregular timber-framed structures have been positioned on either side of a prominent pathway crossing the Braak.
The structures frame various historically significant buildings, depending on the viewer’s vantage point. Tourists, vendors, executives, law-practitioners and the homeless frequent the area. Confronted with such a diverse range of participants, the pavilion is intended as a talking point – a network creator and social equalizer in a complex landscape.
The pavilion was constructed on a very limited budget, forcing the architects to be creative in the conceptualisation and planning of the structure. People from near and far offered assistance. Local construction company, CS Properties, who constructed the pavilion, provided discarded scaffold planks, old shutter boards and second hand shade netting for the structure. Stumps of alien trees, which had been felled in the nearby Jan Marais Nature Park and other Cape Nature parks, were donated as seating. Ladies from the Legacy Project assisted by weaving strings and stitching the shade netting. Artist Strijdom van der Merwe, who was casually passing by, was called over to paint geometric forms on the focal panel. The final aesthetic of the pavilion depended on contributions made by visitors during the Triennale.
Creative research submissions
2021
As part of the submission by Pieter Mathews in collaboration with Dr. Hendrik Auret from the Department of Architecture of the University of Free State
Overview
Die Braak is the historic town square and cultural heart of Stellenbosch. The word “Braak” means fallow land and refers to the time when this parcel of land was left bare amongst the surrounding agricultural fields and town. In our contemporary context, “Braak” carries an unsettling reference to the potential future of our planet as a place devoid (‘braak’) of resources, filled with waste. The 2020 Stellenbosch Triennale theme, “Tomorrow there will be more of us”, echoes this sentiment.
The Braak pavilion, a temporary structure erected of reclaimed materials for the Stellenbosch Triennale, confronts visitors with this bleak prospect and invites them to consider alternative relationships with waste, like learning to appreciate waste as resource. More than an abstract idea, the public is encouraged to participate in the creation of the pavilion, weaving their own strands of waste into its structure as a metaphor for the capacity of individual contributions to conserve the planet.
The irregular timber-framed structures have been positioned on either side of a prominent pathway crossing the Braak. The structures frame various historically significant buildings, depending on the viewer’s vantage point. Tourists, vendors, executives, law-practitioners and the homeless frequent the area. Confronted with such a diverse range of participants, the pavilion is intended as a talking point – a network creator and social equalizer in a complex landscape.
The pavilion was constructed on a very limited budget, forcing the architects to be creative in the conceptualisation and planning of the structure. People from near and far offered assistance. Local construction company, CS Properties, who constructed the pavilion, provided discarded scaffold planks, old shutter boards and second hand shade netting for the structure. Stumps of alien trees, which had been felled in the nearby Jan Marais Nature Park and other Cape Nature parks, were donated as seating. Ladies from the Legacy Project assisted by weaving strings and stitching the shade netting. Artist Strijdom van der Merwe, who was casually passing by, was called over to paint geometric forms on the focal panel. The final aesthetic of the pavilion depended on contributions made by visitors during the Triennale.
Creative research submissions
2020
As part of the submission by Pieter Mathews in collaboration with Dr. Hendrik Auret from the Department of Architecture of the University of Free State
Academic Framework: designers, works and social ties in Actor-Network Theory
Actor-network theory (ANT) offers an alternative way to consider the relationship between society, designer and work. One of the developers of ANT, French philosopher Bruno Latour (1996: 369-370), proposed that it contributes three core insight: first, it expands our notion of a network. More than a ‘technical network’ (which is merely one manifestation) actor-networks “may be local, it may have no compulsory paths, no strategically positioned nodes”. Second, ANT “does not limit itself to human individual actors, but extends the word actor – or actant – to non-human, non-individual entities”. Moreover, the actants have “as many dimensions as they have connections” (1996:370). Each actant, each thing “that acts or to which activity is granted by others”, has a “’networky’ character” (1996:373).The resultant networks are so nebulous they become hard to ‘pin down’. Which is, of course, partly the point. Latour proposed that such networks have “a fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropy, capillary character that is never captured by the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structures, systems” (1996:370). Which brings the third insight into play. ANT is not concerned with “traced networks” as ‘things’, but with the co-determinancy of networks and actants emerging from “network-tracing activity” as reciprocities he called “tokens” (1996:378-379).
This “relationist ontology” (Latour, 1996:370) recognises the work as something which ‘works’ in relationship with the designer. One can imagine it as follows: the designer scripts the work in a certain way, which stabilises certain actions done in collaboration with the work as ‘routine’. In turn, such routines become part of the lived reality of designers, while bestowing the relationship with a certain level of dependability, for instance, when tools are used by skilled craftsmen to produce reliable (and predictable) results.
These kinds of interactions spiral outward (and inward) to constitute larger, deeper and more elaborate networks that, eventually, are stabilised as ‘society’. According to the architectural theorist, Albena Yaneva, this means that “it is impossible to understand how a society works without appreciating how design shapes, conditions, facilitates and makes possible everyday sociality” (2009:273).
Drawing on ANT, Yaneva proposed that “objects with their scripts and incorporated programs of action compel and rearticulate social ties”. People and buildings (or components of buildings) are continuously entering into a shared state of agency as co-actants, and therefore “design triggers specific ways of enacting the social” (2009:273-274). Designers inscribe buildings with certain relational expectations, which have the potential to shape the networks we participate in, and therefore “objects [or buildings] with their scripts and incorporated programs of action compel and rearticulate new social ties” (2009:277). Designed objects “perform the social as we use then” (2009: 280), eventually rendering social routines “durable” (2009:281). Understanding works in such relational terms, imbues them with a certain “designerliness” (2009:280) designating the peculiar way in which “a design project can modify all the elements that try to contextualise it” (2009:284). Recognising this, designers are called to consider the ‘working’ of the work amid the performance of their own tracings.
The Braak Pavilion ‘works’ in a similar way. The bold attempt to re-assemble its social reality can be understood as a designerly expression of Actor-Network Theory.
Creative contributions
The Braak Pavilion is essentially a new agent of connection within a networking of actants – networks of timber, netting and recycled material, but also networks of design, construction and interpersonal relations. Connections that are constantly evolving through the emergent contributions of new role players (visitors). As such, the pavilion becomes an ever-redefining reflection (and critical re-scripting) of the networks in which it was placed as well as those it helped to create.
As a building constructed of materials usually considered as waste, the pavilion re-scripts the associations people have of these materials. Moreover, by enticing visitors to walk amid these structures (each framing a historic ‘treasure’ bordering the Braak) the pavilion works on the level of the co-determinancies between people and waste: first, by pointing out our contemporary relationships with production networks and the resultant boom in waste production. Second, by allowing waste material (as actant) to shape our experience of a historic space. Third, by questioning the assumed disconnect between ‘what-is-beautiful’ and ‘what-is-waste’; and lastly by giving waste material a second life (and later a third when the structures are reconfigured and erected in the Idas Valley community park). Beyond efficiency, it proposes that recycling can be a wholesome and beautiful gesture. Thereby the notion of limited resources, amid a willingness to take action and the freedom to make decisions, becomes a ‘tracing-activity’ amid traces sustained by creative participation – a ‘token’ performing a more empathetic social stance towards waste, thereby rendering it ‘durable’.
The assemblage of structures along the path mediate conversation through the specific way in which it delegates and facilitates activities of walking,
waiting, sitting and resting, and as these simple actions are repeated and repeatedly enjoyed by different users, this repetition mobilizes new social relationships with waste, and “[fortifies] public bonds” (2009:276) in new ways.
Beyond negotiating new social ties between people, the elements of the pavilion are placed in such a way that it frames its relationship with the older buildings (and their connections and networks). Not only in terms of creating physical relationships, but also by drawing the longevity of these historic buildings into sharp contrast with the seeming expendability of waste.
The pavilion is a fusion between the disciplines of public art, sculpture and architecture. Yet it is considered nothing more than the ‘armature’ or skeleton, which keeps certain conceptual notions upright. The notions were conceived to develop throughout the triennial as people participated in its making.
The triennial had to be cut short due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet its digital ‘networking’ continues to provoke new readings and connections. The pavilion remains as an event of interaction. By providing only the armature as defined structure, the pavilion encouraged local artists and the community to participate in the “completion” of the pavilion. Waste materials such as discarded fishing nets, ropes, plastic bags and nylon packaging were woven and knotted as infill material. By assuming the role of facilitator, rather than that of the author, the architects allowed the edifice to become a catalyst for a larger message belonging to the greater community. The participatory, relational process, which formed the inaugural architectural pavilion, bears testimony to the potential for re-scripted, ‘networky’ agencies to develop between creatives, the created and the broader society.
Public profile
The Braak Pavilion was featured in the Stellenbosch Triennale Catalogue. Since then, it has been widely published online, most notably in a Wallpaper* column on architectural pavilions.
Bibliography
Stathaki, E. 2021. Architectural pavilions: architects packing a big punch with small structures. Wallpaper* [online], 22 Feb. Available from: <https://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/architecture/bold-architectural-pavilions-and-temporary-structures>.
Mbongwa, K. 2020. Stellenbosch Triennale Catalogue: Tomorrow There Will Be More of Us, pp. 140-144
Morris, C. 2020. The Stellenbosch Triennale: what to expect. Visi [online], 6 Feb. Available from: https://visi.co.za/the-stellenbosch-triennale-what-to-expect/.
Archello. 2020. Braak Pavilion. Available from: <https://archello.com/project/braak-pavilion>.
Works cited
Latour, B. 1996. On actor-network theory: a few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47(4), pp. 369-381.
Yaneva, A. 2009. Making the social hold: towards an Actor-Network Theory of design. Design and Culture, 1(3), pp. 273-288.